Princes of Victorian Bohemia

David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-87) is one of the forgotten masters of Victorian photography. In the 1860s he created a remarkable series of photographic portraits of his friends in the artistic circle known as the 'St John's Wood Clique'. Ground-breaking in their use of close-ups, soft focus and chiaroscuro effects, Wynfield's photographs were identified by no less a person than Julia Margaret Cameron as the dominant formative influence upon her work. Yet for most of the twentieth century Wynfield's works, preserved at the Royal Academy in London, were known only to a few scholars and connoisseurs.

The Royal Academy photographs, together with others from a tiny number of private collections in the UK and abroad, are now published for the first time, accompanied by a text that gives full details of Wynfield's life, his subjects, his friends and sitters; and sets out the remarkable modernity, intimacy, and immediacy of Wynfield's work.

Share this

Author Juliet Hacking trained as an art historian at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She worked as a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery, and now works as a photographic specialist for Sotheby's.